Kenneth Branagh Theatre Co. announces opening season

Kenneth Branagh’s new company has today announced its inaugural season at London’s Garrick Theatre.

In a year of unmissable drama the Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company will stage The Winter’s Tale, Harlequinade, The Painkiller, Romeo & Juliet and The Entertainer. The season starts this October.

The company will include Rob Brydon, Judi Dench, Lily James and Richard Madden with a creative team that will include artistic associates Rob Ashford & Christopher Oram, director (and adaptor) Sean Foley, Neil Austin, Chris Shutt, Lucy Bevan and Patrick Doyle.

The box office opened this morning for Plays at the Garrick.

It opens with Shakespeare’s timeless tragicomedy of obsession and redemption, The Winter’s Tale, reimagined in a new production co-directed by Rob Ashford and Kenneth Branagh. Judi Dench will play Paulina, Kenneth Branagh will play Leontes.

Terence Rattigan’s affectionate celebration of the lunatic art of putting on a play is revisited with Harlequinade from October 24.

The rarely seen comic gem is a play within a play as a classical theatre company attempts to produce The Winter’s Tale and Romeo and Juliet, while the intrigues and dalliances of the company members are accidently revealed with increasingly chaotic and hysterical consequences.

Sean Foley directs his darkly hilarious adaptation of Francis Veberʼs classic French farce, The Painkiller, as Kenneth Branagh and Rob Brydon reprise the roles they played to great acclaim at Belfast’s Lyric Theatre in this comic tour-de-force.

Life imitates art as KBTC do actually stage Romeo & Juliet and The Winter’s Tale.

Romeo and Juliet is scheduled for May reuniting Richard Madden and Lily James who play the leads in Shakespeareʼs heartbreaking tale of forbidden love.

John Osborne’s The Entertainer completes the season, opening in August 2016.

Set against the backdrop of post-war Britain, the modern classic conjures the seedy glamour of the old music halls for an explosive examination of public masks and private torment. Kenneth Branagh steps into Olivier’s shoes as the unforgettable Archie Rice.